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They are taking naps 7% of days in the winter (i.e. about every 14 days) and 22% in the summer (about every 4-5 days).

Which they have measured by the fact that the wrist bracelet wasn't moving for periods longer than 15 minutes.
On 94 people, across 2 continents and 3 countries, in groups of 5 to 15 people.

But regardless of those sketchy definitions and methodology the point is that they are actually reporting 1.2 - 1.4 longer daily sleep periods than those listed in summary and the npr article.
That's a lot of time being motionless on a kudu or an impala skin on the floor of the hut for someone not sleeping.
They are sleeping much closer to 6.9 - 8.5 hours - NOT just 5.7 - 7.1.

And then there's the crappy measurement tool they are using.

This study that Philips lists as the proof of actigraphy units being "a gold standard" shows moderate correlations at best (but mostly weak to moderate) with more accurate methods of measurement - if you measure sleeping patterns of patients suffering from depression and insomnia.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

This one on the other hand, cited by the study in question shows a MUCH HIGHER correlation between actigraphy and PSG.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
A sensitivity (both methods showing sleep at the same time) with a 0.965 correlation and accuracy (total proportion correct) with a 0.863 correlation, while specificity (both methods showing awake at the same time) being rather weak at a mere 0.329.

Still, pretty good results - if you are fine with p values of 0.363, 0.389 and 0.195 for sensitivity, accuracy and specificity, respectfully.
I.e. More than 1 in 3 chance of false positives. About 1 in 5 for being awake.

Which is why sleep time measurements in the hunter-gatherer study, which they average out to 6.4, have deviations as high as +/- 1.39 hours.
On average, that 6.4 hour average of theirs has a 0.87 hour deviation.
So, while that particular 5.9 hour measurement (one with deviation of 1.39 hours) varies from 4.51 - 7.29 hours, many others go as high as 7.5 hours.
Which is pretty damn close to the 6.9 - 8.5 average of 7.7.
Adding their sleep and wake onsets to that - and it's about 8 hours.

I.e. They are interpreting readings from an inaccurate tool, with a known overestimation bias as an overestimation EVEN WHEN IT IS NOT ONE - due to high rate of false positive built-in into the tool.
Those people are lying motionless on the skin of an impala, on the floor of the hut (during the rain season - otherwise in open air), with things buzzing, flying and crawling around...
And the algorithm is telling them "No, no... an insomniac in a bed in North Carolina would not be asleep yet."

One of the most major criticisms of Yucca Mountain was that the DOE's original policy using the 'Defense in Depth' approach to the specification for building a spent fuel containment facility could not be applied to Yucca's geology. The reason to choose a specific geology (in addition to being seisemically stable) was also to have the geologic chemistry of the rock able to control the the amount of time ground water took to travel through the facility carrying radioactive isotopes, eventually, into the water table. If the amount of time it takes exceeds the decay rate of the longest lived radio-isotopes then the facility was providing defense in depth.

In addition, as a site like that would be containing pu-239, whose half life is around 25000 years, after considering the daughter products you need a geology capable of containing it for 500,000 years, which is what the original specification called for.

Studies of the Yucca mountain hydrology (pdf) revealed that the passage cl-36 from atmospheric nuclear testing took less that 50 years in ground water through Yucca mountain so the reality of Yucca is it is inappropriate to contain *any* kind of radioactive products. The reason is Yucca is pumice and volcanic ash.

Feild studies have established that crystaline rocks like granite and bentonite clays can acheive this control. So far Finland is on track to be the first with an active facility with a Swedish facility also in the works.

Curiously, getting this right should be the one thing pro and anti nuclear folk should be able to agree on, if only for their own reasons. For Nuclear power to continue operating such a storage facility is essential so that new reactors can be deployed and materials removed from reactor sites. For people against Nuclear power such a facility would improve the safety of the industry as a whole by providing a place to store the materials permanently where there ingress into the environment can be controlled.

The DOE have got to build a facility somewhere. The right location has to be chosen because of all the rail and other infrastructure required to move the spent fuel has to be funded and built. This should not be a difficult thing for America to achieve by applying a scientific approach to selecting the site and building it instead of the politics used to select Yucca Mountain.

That could work very well.

I would call them SJW's and if you'd asked me a year ago if the "if you ignore it, they'd go away" belief would hold true. Right now, they're extremely vocal, and very loud. And the main drivers of the safe spaces policies, including the restriction of free speech on campuses. Ignoring them sadly, doesn't seem to have worked over the last 8-10 years. The only solution then is to call out their bullshit for all the world to see, which seems to be happening. Especially since SJW is now hitting the mainstream, and as more people see it people call them out for their general craziness the more they shrink back.

Good point, that would be interesting to see. It shouldn't be too hard to get someone to do it, someone just finished up a long-term study on video games and whether or not it increases violence. That answer is only if you look for it, but in general no.

The article highlights an interesting idea. However, one concern is that most sunscreens (except total blocks like zinc oxide and titanium dioxide-pasty stuff) are composed of biologically active compounds that absorb photons. They degrade quite quickly in a hot environment (typical advice is reapply every 2 hours in the sun-mostly for wearing off). For most cosmetically acceptable sunscreens they would need an environmentally protective device to keep them from degrading quite quickly. You probably shouldn't leave sunblock in a car on a hot day, or use them past expiration as they are in the unusual group of topicals that really do loose potency.

To get to your comments... Well, I'm not so sure Google is the best way to get medical info, but here's what I came up with (I'm not a dermatologist, but I am an MD).

These studies looked to see how much of the TiO2 penetrated the skin and got into blood (none to very little), but only after relatively short exposures (paywalls ahead):
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/a...
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi...
http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.o...
http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.o...

This one looked at "sub-chronic" exposure (2, 4, and 8 weeks):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

Lastly, this one looked at the effects from TiO2 in makeup and while TiO2 wasn't toxic to cells, hitting it with UV radiation caused some free radical formation, whatever that means for tumorogenesis:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Bottom line: Sunblock is probably safe and at this point is definitely better for you than constant sunburns.

The article highlights an interesting idea. However, one concern is that most sunscreens (except total blocks like zinc oxide and titanium dioxide-pasty stuff) are composed of biologically active compounds that absorb photons. They degrade quite quickly in a hot environment (typical advice is reapply every 2 hours in the sun-mostly for wearing off). For most cosmetically acceptable sunscreens they would need an environmentally protective device to keep them from degrading quite quickly. You probably shouldn't leave sunblock in a car on a hot day, or use them past expiration as they are in the unusual group of topicals that really do loose potency.

To get to your comments... Well, I'm not so sure Google is the best way to get medical info, but here's what I came up with (I'm not a dermatologist, but I am an MD).

These studies looked to see how much of the TiO2 penetrated the skin and got into blood (none to very little), but only after relatively short exposures (paywalls ahead):
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/a...
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi...
http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.o...
http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.o...

This one looked at "sub-chronic" exposure (2, 4, and 8 weeks):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

Lastly, this one looked at the effects from TiO2 in makeup and while TiO2 wasn't toxic to cells, hitting it with UV radiation caused some free radical formation, whatever that means for tumorogenesis:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

Bottom line: Sunblock is probably safe and at this point is definitely better for you than constant sunburns.

You can read the individual statements of the science academies. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) They go much further than simply stating that radiative physics is a real thing. Most state that the IPCC represents the consensus view and that most of the warming over the last 50 years is due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.

Thank you for confirming what I said. The IPCC's Fifth Assessment report is almost verbatim where my assessment of climate models came from. In Chapter 9, Box 9.1 the IPCC report states:
For instance, maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent
the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system (Watanabe et al., 2010; Donner et al., 2011; Gent et al., 2011; Golaz et al., 2011; Martin et al., 2011; Hazeleger et al., 2012; Mauritsen et al., 2012; Hourdin et al., 2013).

You'll note that the assessment is backed with a wealth of references to papers confirming that climate models almost universally hand tune clouds to prevent unrealistic energy imbalances. That's not a confidence booster in the predictive power of climate models for telling us what to expect the energy imbalance to do in the future, which is ENTIRELY what the greenhouse effect is.

On of the referenced papers(Golaz et al) goes into more depths of the challenges still presented by this:
We have shown that there is sufficient ambiguity in the CM3 adjustable cloud parameters to construct alternate configurations (CM3w, CM3c) that achieve the desired radiation balance. These configurations exhibit only modest differences in their present-day climatology. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to select the “better” configuration solely based on present-day metrics such as those in Figure2. However, CM3w and CM3c differ significantly in the magnitude of their indirect effects. As a result, their predictions of the 20th century warming are strongly affected (Figures3 and 4).

CM3w predicts the most realistic 20th century warming. However, this is achieved with a small and less desirable threshold radius of 6.0 m for the onset of precipitation. Conversely, CM3c uses a more desirable value of 10.6 m but produces a very unrealistic 20th century temperature evolution.

All of which is to point out that the evidence is climate models still can't simulate the absolutely most fundamental and driving factor of future change, Top Of Atmosphere energy imbalance. But hey, don't let that stop you from lumping climate model results into the global consensus and claiming it as fact. I just ask you be more honest and start calling your belief religious consensus and not scientific.

On that basis you can't tax me. You need CAUSATION.

Ah, and it comes out. You're coal power. Gotcha. No, I don't need 'causation' to tax you, no more than Uncle Sam needs causation to tax my income.

On that basis you can't tax me. You need CAUSATION.

Let's see. We have studies that:
1. Show emissions from coal power plants. We know what they are, quantities, etc...
2. Show air samples in communities around said plants containing elevated amounts of said emissions.
3. Show elevated amounts of illness

At this point, yeah, it could still be considered correlation. However, that's not all
4. Laboratory tests of said emissions, in the amounts experienced by the communities, have shown that the lab animals exposed suffer higher rates of illness/death
5. Biological studies have even identified the mechanisms involved in creating many of the illnesses.

Face it dude, you're a tobacco exective saying that the increased incidences of lung cancer among smokers is 'only correlation'.

People that don't grasp the distinction between correlation and causation shouldn't cite statistics AT ALL.

Well, it's a good thing you don't cite any, now is it?

As to power plants being dangerous to workers etc... don't be obtuse. It makes you sound petty and quarrelsome which is not helping you.

I thought it was a valid arguing tactic going by your example.

As to internalizing costs, you cannot do that unless you can nail down causation on a case by case basis.

You may not be able to be precise about it, but you can get it in the ballpark.

As to 29%... we're talking about PM2.5 in San Francisco actually if you read the source. And the amount of air pollution in San Francisco is pretty fucking low.

Compared to China, yes. They still have problems with it.

Let me make this clear, you know there is arsenic in many natural water sources right? That's something we often use as RAT POISON.

There's also Uranium in my water. Do I need to point out why I don't need to worry about having a functioning nuclear reactor for a body anytime soon? Man, you assume all sorts of ignorance on my part. And then you go on and on and on about it...

Yes, dosage is incredibly important. But the point is - there's enough pollution from coal power plants, combined with other pollution sources, to cause serious negative health benefits. Remember how I mentioned taxing gasoline for it's pollution as well? You're ALL responsible.

As to the geo engineering... if you're not familiar with the proposed methods of geo engineering than you're not well read on climate change. Period.

And this matters why when my point was only tangently related to climate change? Again, reading your sources, these are not 'shovel ready' proposals.

The cost structure for these plans is well under a billion dollars for either one. And either would entirely negate the effect of global warming. Understand... ENTIRELY negate the warming. ALL of it.

If that was true, I'd expect a lot more scientists to be jumping on it.

Instead, from the articles it's made very clear that there remains a LOT of research left on the Sulfur Dioxide problem, and the second points out that it'd only be a partial solution, and reducing CO2 emissions would still be needed.

The carbon credit scheme will do nothing of the kind whilst costing trillions.

if you want the warming to stop, support a plan that will ACTUALLY work.

Which is all well and good when you realize that I never supported carbon credits. I viewed them as an over-co

The worst are the fanatics who claim that climate scientists are never wrong. They can think of a justification for everything. They use statistics the way a drunk man uses a lightpost: for support, rather than illumination. For example, at this point, it's pretty clear that the climate models overestimated the warming. It's no big deal, science will eventually correct itself, but watch as so many people can't accept that.

Yeah, yeah. Too bad that's not actually the case, because they are comparing apples and oranges. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

The level of agreement between climate model simulations and observed surface temperature change is a topic of scientific and policy concern. While the Earth system continues to accumulate energy due to anthropogenic and other radiative forcings, estimates of recent surface temperature evolution fall at the lower end of climate model projections. Global mean temperatures from climate model simulations are typically calculated using surface air temperatures, while the corresponding observations are based on a blend of air and sea surface temperatures.

This argument of yours have been completely debunked by science over and over. The main thing you're ignoring is how long things stay in the atmosphere. If your reasoning was correct we would already be boiling because water vapor leads to greenhouse, leads to more evaporation leads to more greenhouse etc. etc.

We aren't because there is a massive negative feedback system that counter-acts the effect of water vapor as a greenhouse gas almost entirely. That system is called "rain" ...
so the impact of water vapor on temperature is aggravated by CO2 - not independent there-off.

Source:
http://scholarsandrogues.com/2...

Except we don't know that interaction with near the confidence you claim. The prevailing theory is that Water Vapor, which accounts for ~80% of the greenhouse effect, is short lived and there for NOT an important long term feedback mechanism.Observation however shows that after volcanic eruptions shift the global energy balance abruptly, the decreasing temperature leads to rapid feedbacks bringing the global energy balance back to 'normal'. The predominant mechanism being water vapor. So at a minimum we have witnessed repeatedly that in response to lowered temperature, water vapor acts as a negative feedback to warm things up. Luckier still for us, it doesn't continue on as a warming feedback as we approach the current global norms, it tapers off.

Ah, but you don't care about interpreting observed scientific evidence, you'll want some links to articles.

We don't know that water vapor can truly be ignored in the long term as a feedback mechanism, it's just been the prevailing theory. In current state of the art climate models, scientists are still testing our theories on what the components of the atmosphere actually do in given scenarios. One of the steps in those model runs though is still setting parameters that approximate cloud behaviour, because we still can't afford the CPU cycles to simulate them with accuracy. Those parameters though are NOT always tuned for better cloud simulation, but INSTEAD are tuned for better TOA energy balance results. We do this because without doing that, the global energy imbalance runs off into an "unrealistic state", which is a direct quote from the IPCC. It's a better alternative to simply straight up adding/subtracting energy as we used to so it's at the moment a necessary evil. It ALSO is a clear and touchy example of where we absolutely can NOT point to our understanding of clouds and water vapor and say see, our climate models show that water vapor does X or Y. We hand tuned water vapor to autocorrect for an unknown number of errors and misunderstandings in our model. It's hardly fair or accurate to say we really understand water vapor's roll so well when our simulation of it is still so poor.

references to Cloud tuning in a coupled climate model: Impact on 20th century warming in Geophysical Research Letters and Tuning the climate of a global model by Mauritsen et al. These are THE two most thorough papers from climate modellers on the model tuning methodology and use many more words than I did to essentially say the same thing.

This argument of yours have been completely debunked by science over and over. The main thing you're ignoring is how long things stay in the atmosphere. If your reasoning was correct we would already be boiling because water vapor leads to greenhouse, leads to more evaporation leads to more greenhouse etc. etc.

We aren't because there is a massive negative feedback system that counter-acts the effect of water vapor as a greenhouse gas almost entirely. That system is called "rain" ...
so the impact of water vapor on temperature is aggravated by CO2 - not independent there-off.

Source:
http://scholarsandrogues.com/2...

Except we don't know that interaction with near the confidence you claim. The prevailing theory is that Water Vapor, which accounts for ~80% of the greenhouse effect, is short lived and there for NOT an important long term feedback mechanism.Observation however shows that after volcanic eruptions shift the global energy balance abruptly, the decreasing temperature leads to rapid feedbacks bringing the global energy balance back to 'normal'. The predominant mechanism being water vapor. So at a minimum we have witnessed repeatedly that in response to lowered temperature, water vapor acts as a negative feedback to warm things up. Luckier still for us, it doesn't continue on as a warming feedback as we approach the current global norms, it tapers off.

Ah, but you don't care about interpreting observed scientific evidence, you'll want some links to articles.

We don't know that water vapor can truly be ignored in the long term as a feedback mechanism, it's just been the prevailing theory. In current state of the art climate models, scientists are still testing our theories on what the components of the atmosphere actually do in given scenarios. One of the steps in those model runs though is still setting parameters that approximate cloud behaviour, because we still can't afford the CPU cycles to simulate them with accuracy. Those parameters though are NOT always tuned for better cloud simulation, but INSTEAD are tuned for better TOA energy balance results. We do this because without doing that, the global energy imbalance runs off into an "unrealistic state", which is a direct quote from the IPCC. It's a better alternative to simply straight up adding/subtracting energy as we used to so it's at the moment a necessary evil. It ALSO is a clear and touchy example of where we absolutely can NOT point to our understanding of clouds and water vapor and say see, our climate models show that water vapor does X or Y. We hand tuned water vapor to autocorrect for an unknown number of errors and misunderstandings in our model. It's hardly fair or accurate to say we really understand water vapor's roll so well when our simulation of it is still so poor.

references to Cloud tuning in a coupled climate model: Impact on 20th century warming in Geophysical Research Letters and Tuning the climate of a global model by Mauritsen et al. These are THE two most thorough papers from climate modellers on the model tuning methodology and use many more words than I did to essentially say the same thing.

... the "raw vs adjusted" argument has no bearing on the fact that the Karl paper reaches different conclusions, based on the available data, than just about everyone else, AND used highly questionable methods to reach those conclusions. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2015-07-18]

That's an opinion, not a fact. [Dumb Scientist]

Absolute bullshit. Karl et al. conclusion is an outlier. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2015-07-23]

If Jane/Lonny's opinion that Karl et al. used "highly questionable" methods were widely shared by scientists, Jane/Lonny wouldn't have had to say things like this to Dr. Gavin Schmidt (director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies) after Dr. Schmidt disagreed with Jane/Lonny's uninformed opinion.

... Karl et al. conclusion is an outlier. And you don't have to be a scientist to know it... if it weren't, there wouldn't have been news media all over the place reporting "No 'Hiatus' After All". Outliers are outliers. They can be recognized from their conclusions, as I did, but by lay people they can also often be recognized by the media uproar they stir. Simple logic says that if it hadn't been NEWS, it wouldn't have made a stir in the news. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-07-23]

Jane's method of spotting outliers via media uproar is cute, but it would be more rigorous to actually look at Fig 1 (a) and (b). The new global trend's central estimate is within the error bars of the old estimate. Ironically, Jane/Lonny made the same mistake two years ago regarding Cowtan and Way 2013, which yielded a trend similar to Karl et al. 2015. Perhaps Jane/Lonny forgot about that while ranting about "outliers"?

If Jane/Lonny would actually calculate a trend estimate with autocorrelated uncertainties (either using the code I've repeatedly given him, or by writing his own) then he'd realize that Karl et al. 2015 really wasn't news. For instance, years before Karl et al. 2015, I'd already told Jane/Lonny that "There hasn't been a statistically significant change in the warming rate, and there isn't a statistically significant difference between the projected and observed trends."

Again, I said this to Jane/Lonny long before Karl et al. 2015. Even without Karl et al. 2015, it's still clear that there hasn't been a statistically significant change in the warming rate, and there isn't a statistically significant difference between the projected and observed trends.

That's not news to anyone who's calculated a trend estimate with autocorrelated uncertainties. Have you done that yet? Will you ever do that, Jane/Lonny?

Apparently NOAA and NASA think nobody in 1937 knew how to read a thermometer. I find that idea... unlikely. [Lonny Eachus, 2015-07-04]

No adjustment p

Actually You are twice an idiot. Somebody who complains about bad environmental information when you have that as sig

About that "CO2 is good for plants" theory: NOPE. [bit.ly]

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

[1] Satellite observations reveal a greening of the globe over recent decades. The role in this greening of the “CO2 fertilization” effect—the enhancement of photosynthesis due to rising CO2 levels—is yet to be established. The direct CO2 effect on vegetation should be most clearly expressed in warm, arid environments where water is the dominant limit to vegetation growth. Using gas exchange theory, we predict that the 14% increase in atmospheric CO2 (1982–2010) led to a 5 to 10% increase in green foliage cover in warm, arid environments. Satellite observations, analyzed to remove the effect of variations in precipitation, show that cover across these environments has increased by 11%. Our results confirm that the anticipated CO2 fertilization effect is occurring alongside ongoing anthropogenic perturbations to the carbon cycle and that the fertilization effect is now a significant land surface process.

Seriously you aren't just a propagandist you're a bad one.

About that "CO2 is good for plants" theory: NOPE. [bit.ly]

Hrmmm
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

the repeated ignorance is quite astounding.

LOL

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

Do you ever grow tired of being wrong ?

It's called the Maunder Minimum for a reason. There is definitely a correlation with sun activity... and my guess is that it's better than the correlation with volcanism. I don't know that for sure, but that's my best recollection. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-07-15]

It is easier to believe the documented condition of the sun going quiet for a few hundred years was the major factor behind the cooling than it is to believe one or more volcanoes were going off constantly for a few hundred years creating an ash blanket over the Earth for the whole period and caused it. [dunkindave, 2015-07-15]

Miller et al. 2012 says the Little Ice Age "can be linked to an unusual 50-year-long episode with four large sulfur-rich explosive eruptions".

Of course, the Maunder Minimum also contributed to the Little Ice Age. Regarding other contributors, Ruddiman 2003 (PDF) says "plague-driven CO2 changes were also a significant causal factor in temperature changes during the Little Ice Age (1300–1900 AD)."

There's been some debate about Ruddiman's "early anthropogenic" hypothesis. He discusses the LIA in his 2013 AGU lecture at 38m29s. Briefly, plagues killed many people in Europe and the Americas during the LIA, and their farms were overgrown by forests. That sequestered atmospheric CO2, causing even more cooling.

It's called the Maunder Minimum for a reason. There is definitely a correlation with sun activity... and my guess is that it's better than the correlation with volcanism. I don't know that for sure, but that's my best recollection. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-07-15]

It is easier to believe the documented condition of the sun going quiet for a few hundred years was the major factor behind the cooling than it is to believe one or more volcanoes were going off constantly for a few hundred years creating an ash blanket over the Earth for the whole period and caused it. [dunkindave, 2015-07-15]

Miller et al. 2012 says the Little Ice Age "can be linked to an unusual 50-year-long episode with four large sulfur-rich explosive eruptions".

Of course, the Maunder Minimum also contributed to the Little Ice Age. Regarding other contributors, Ruddiman 2003 (PDF) says "plague-driven CO2 changes were also a significant causal factor in temperature changes during the Little Ice Age (1300–1900 AD)."

There's been some debate about Ruddiman's "early anthropogenic" hypothesis. He discusses the LIA in his 2013 AGU lecture at 38m29s. Briefly, plagues killed many people in Europe and the Americas during the LIA, and their farms were overgrown by forests. That sequestered atmospheric CO2, causing even more cooling.

I believe that homosexuality is a behavior that is learned and changeable, instead of inborn.

Setting aside whether this is true, why does this matter? How does it have the least bit of relevance?

Something that is without a doubt best for children are a mom and a dad.

Plenty of reason to doubt this. For instance, "child abuse".

But aside from that, what relevance is that? Do you think that banning gay marriage will cause a child to live in two-parent male/female households? I suspect that, absent another rule that is completely separate from gay marriage, you'll get exactly as many pairs of gay parents whether or not they are married.

If you don't think this makes a difference look at all the statistics - from physical, physiological and mental health and including the heightened probabilities of drug use, suicide, school drop out rates, wedlock births and crime - if you just take the father out of the equation

Do you have any statistics that compare to female parents to a male and female parent? Because comparing a male and female parent, to a single female parent, is not isolating sexual diversity as what improves parenting. The number of parents is clearly relevant.

wedlock births

...you are opposed to wedlock births????

Having two women trying to raise a child mimics correctly the absence of a father

No. Come on. That's obviously BS. It's pretty obvious why two parents would be better than one.

So I decided to look up the statistics on this, since you mentioned that they existed, and what I found completely contradicts you. It shows that *only* the number of parents really matter, and their gender is irrelevant: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

It may even be that three live-in parents are better than two, but it's much harder to find statistics on that.

If this is really your reasoning, you should push for laws that remove children from single-parent and same-sex-parent households, and redistribute them in mixed-sex households (perhaps some polyamorous households, maybe some non-romantically-involved roommates?). Gay marriage doesn't matter to you, it's single-sex parenting, and you don't really help that by opposing gay marriage.

Especially hard if you have experiments that prove that you CAN indeed manipulate the brain with elecromagnetic stimulation:

http://www.heise.de/tr/artikel...
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

So we're way past the "is there a measurable effect - yes or no" phase.

But the modelers argue that this really wasn't a failure, because their predictions served as worst-case scenarios that mobilized international efforts.

so.... how about those climate models out there????

So, you're saying that climate models that do not reflect the mobilization of international efforts mean that we should not attempt to push for international efforts to ensure that those worst-case predictions do not happen?

Climate science is always evolving. Scientists learn more about the planet and how different aspects of our planet's behavior interact, and they discover new aspects through this process. I don't think there's a lot of argument that humans are taking huge carbon deposits that are the result of plants using carbon from the air as building material in their structures and reintroducing that carbon into the atmosphere again. The debate is what that does to climate.

I think the more salient point is our call to action should take into account uncertainties within the models. If the actions we call people to are costly, people should reasonably expect that the evidence brought forward is certain enough to justify the cost...

Modelling climate is insanely challenging as the scope is our entire planet, and the components involved number in the hundreds or thousands, and the interactions between them are again almost universally dependant upon one another. Climate models are a great tool for us to investigate and test theories about those systems and their interactions. We are getting pretty good at sorting the important/dominant components from the less significant ones. That said, there IS still a long ways to go. I would strongly advocate for continued study and development of climate modelling. I would also strongly caution against placing high confidence in specific model projections out into the future. Evidence follows:

Climate models fail the conservation of energy test. That's pretty fundamental, and models very widely still 'leak' energy.
From Mauritsen et al.
Among the model simulations whose data were available at the time of this analysis, there is a tendency for drift in the CMIP5 models to be less pronounced than in some of the CMIP3 models, and there is a reduction in the number of warm and cold biased models in CMIP5. Only a few models are close to zero imbalance, or likely to relax to near-zero imbalance. If a model equilibrates at a positive radiation imbalance it indicates that it leaks energy, which appears to be the case in the majority of models, and if the equilibrium balance is negative it means that the model has artificial energy sources.

Climate model tuning today normally uses adjustments to cloud parameters to balance the Top of Atmosphere energy. The single central driving force behind climate change still gets tuned by hand and is not yet an emergent property of the underlying understanding or simulation of the system.
From Chapter 9 of the IPCC AR5, complete with more than a half dozen citations to articles on model tuning confirming exactly this.
For instance, maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system (Watanabe et al., 2010; Donner et al., 2011; Gent et al., 2011; Golaz et al., 2011; Martin et al., 2011; Hazeleger et al., 2012; Mauritsen et al., 2012; Hourdin et al., 2013).

It's tempting to take the above and declare all climate models are bunk and toss them out, which would be very bad. Climate models are doing an important job of

Hydro dams (which don't and can't contribute most of the power in the USA or in the world) cause ocean acidification only to the limited extent that they rapidly increase CO2 in the atmosphere.

Another straw-man. Actually two. Hydro dams have been accused of emitting a "pulse" of CO2 when the plant-covered area behind them is flooded. Perhaps, but no more than if the same area burned in a forest fire. Hardly significant. THEN, the other accusation is that they emit CO2 because organic material falls on them and decomposes at the bottom. Also probably true. BUT... that is no more true of the dam than it is of any other large body of water. Apparently you have something against bodies of water. Do you think we should eliminate lakes because of the CO2 they emit? Because that's basically your argument. And beavers probably flood more total area than hydro dams do. I find that argument truly laughable. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-06-04]

Good grief, Jane. I said limited extent, which is also basically what I say about solar, wind, and nuclear power, while supporting them. I'm not accusing hydro dams of anything. And I certainly don't have something against bodies of water, or think we should eliminate lakes "because of the CO2 they emit"(?!). In fact, my argument has always been that bodies of water aren't emitting significant amounts of CO2.

Once again, you're mistakenly calculating the absolute value of atmospheric CO2 ("400 to 5000 ppm") rather than calculating its rate of change

It wasn't mistaken, it was quite deliberate. Nor was it misleading. I was comparing values from the Cambrian period. It's rather pointless to talk about "rate of change" between Cambrian and now (see chart again), when the time period was > 500 million years ago, and concentrations have had many rises and falls since then. Another straw man. I know your point is partly about rate of change, but it's ALSO about total change. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-06-04]

Despite Jane's hand-drawn schematic, higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations still don't cause ocean acidification unless the concentration increases rapidly. So it was misleading for Jane to compare values from the Cambrian period to learn about ocean acidification.

As Jane says, CO2 concentrations have had many rises and falls over the last 500 million years. That's why I've repeatedly showed Jane Kiessling and Simpson 2010, which concluded that "four of five global metazoan reef crises in the last 500 Myr were probably at least partially governed by OA [ocean acidification] and rapid global warming."

Kiessling and Simpson 2010 isn't misleading because, unlike Jane, they examined CO2's rate of change over the last 500 Myr.

... we are still left with the old quandary (and likelihood) of whether CO2 concentrations lagged temperature rise. ... There are many variables to the PETM situation, not all of which are known. Among them, as I have stated, was whether CO2 concentrations lagged temperatures or the other way around. What caused the pulse of methane, or whatever it was (still unknown)? There are several theories, none of them strong enough to dominate. ...

Not sure what your point is. The models are useful, but don't pay attention to them because they have (what would seem to be typical) modeing issues,... so they're not useful? Seems muddled.

As you say yourself, the models are useful for understanding trends and influences, and continue to improve.

Note that the reason you're able to point out a citation on this is because the IPCC (and others) are pointing it out for all to be aware of. It's not like they're not aware of this or trying to hide it.

By your statement, "You can't take a variable you've hand tuned and claim anything about it's predictive powers," you may be missing the point. If the TOA adjustment is to align the model state at some point in time or points in time to real data by "adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds," then how does that invalidate trend and sensitivity predictions of the overall model?

What do you think could be done better? Is there a better method to set these parameters other than TOA balance?

And, more importantly, do you have evidence that the model predictions are heavily sensitive to the sort (or magnitude) of adjustments being made? (I don't know myself, but you seem awfully concerned about the TOA adjustment in particular, so is there an analysis of this you can point to?)

TOA energy IS climate change. Increased CO2(and any other greenhouse gases) act by trapping more radiation coming in at the top of atmosphere boundary. Current climate models, as per the IPCC and 8 cited articles, drift to unrealistic states UNLESS they are tuned by hand for more realistic TOA.

Yes, my concerns are backed up by the papers if you go read them. I can give you a quick link to the one by Golaz in which they test 3 different equally valid seeming cloud tunings to compare the results and they conclude:
CM3w predicts the most realistic 20th century warming. However, this is achieved with a small and less desirable threshold radius of 6.0 m for the onset of precipitation. Conversely, CM3c uses a more desirable value of 10.6 m but produces a very unrealistic 20th century temperature evolution. This might indicate the presence of compensating model errors.

Choosing the most realistic tuning setting for clouds led the model to fail to reproduce the the last century of warming accurately. Choosing a less realistic one gave a better result. For further reference and those that won't read the whole article, ALL 3 tuning settings chosen additionally were chosen on condition of balancing TOA energy correctly.

What is more, this assessment is assuming that all the other forcings not being tuned are correct, because in practice the tuning for TOA could be correcting for other erroneous values across the models regarding energy transfer patterns. If that were the case, simply balancing the overall global TOA would lead to accurate macros, but possibly because of compensating errors... Like the ones that Golaz noted. Also like the observation made throughout the IPCC report on cloud behaviour in models...

Why does it matter? Because it's the driving force of the climate. The climate models ARE still good at helping us understand the climatic responses to the driving. Regrettably though as long as we are hand-correcting the driving variable, we can't say too much from the models about future driving from TOA.

This hardly seems a controversial observation at this point.

So far the treatments of tinnitus have been effective, but with a few caveats (as with all medical interventions).

Here is the original animal study regarding tinnitus: http://www.nature.com/nature/j...
And a review paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
Here is a clinical trial that happened: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
And another clinical case study: http://journals.lww.com/otolog...
And here is a clinical trial currently happening: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2...

To sum up the clinical trial that has already been published: researchers found that VNS did improve tinnitus, but only in patients that were not on drugs that affected neuromodulators such as acetylcholine and norepinephrine.

That doesn't explain record sea ice extents at a time when it is claimed that ocean, not particularly land, temperature is increasing. I'm not trying to claim it's irrelevant. But it certainly does not seem sufficient. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-05-22]

There are reasons to doubt the land ice melting connection to Antarctic sea ice, but I don't think that's one of them. I mentioned real reasons by citing Swart and Fyfe 2013, Polvani and Smith 2013 and referencing fig. 2 and fig. 4(e) from Parkinson and Cavalieri 2012 (PDF).

But ocean warming is sufficient to thin West Antarctic ice sheets, as I've explained:

"West Antarctica is among the most rapidly warming regions on Earth, with an ice sheet that's vulnerable to the warming oceans because it's mainly grounded below sealevel."

"Because West Antarctica juts out into the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), those warming waters are thinning its ice sheet at an accelerating rate. ... Its ice sheet is also mainly grounded below sealevel, making it more vulnerable to the warming oceans than the East's which is mainly grounded above sealevel."

The fact that West Antarctica is mainly grounded below sealevel means that ocean warming causes rapid land ice thinning there. Also, the fact that the bedrock is deeper farther inland from the grounding line has "interesting" consequences. See Rignot et al. 2014 and Joughin et al. 2014.

That doesn't explain record sea ice extents at a time when it is claimed that ocean, not particularly land, temperature is increasing. I'm not trying to claim it's irrelevant. But it certainly does not seem sufficient. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-05-22]

There are reasons to doubt the land ice melting connection to Antarctic sea ice, but I don't think that's one of them. I mentioned real reasons by citing Swart and Fyfe 2013, Polvani and Smith 2013 and referencing fig. 2 and fig. 4(e) from Parkinson and Cavalieri 2012 (PDF).

But ocean warming is sufficient to thin West Antarctic ice sheets, as I've explained:

"West Antarctica is among the most rapidly warming regions on Earth, with an ice sheet that's vulnerable to the warming oceans because it's mainly grounded below sealevel."

"Because West Antarctica juts out into the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), those warming waters are thinning its ice sheet at an accelerating rate. ... Its ice sheet is also mainly grounded below sealevel, making it more vulnerable to the warming oceans than the East's which is mainly grounded above sealevel."

The fact that West Antarctica is mainly grounded below sealevel means that ocean warming causes rapid land ice thinning there. Also, the fact that the bedrock is deeper farther inland from the grounding line has "interesting" consequences. See Rignot et al. 2014 and Joughin et al. 2014.

That doesn't explain record sea ice extents at a time when it is claimed that ocean, not particularly land, temperature is increasing. I'm not trying to claim it's irrelevant. But it certainly does not seem sufficient. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-05-22]

There are reasons to doubt the land ice melting connection to Antarctic sea ice, but I don't think that's one of them. I mentioned real reasons by citing Swart and Fyfe 2013, Polvani and Smith 2013 and referencing fig. 2 and fig. 4(e) from Parkinson and Cavalieri 2012 (PDF).

But ocean warming is sufficient to thin West Antarctic ice sheets, as I've explained:

"West Antarctica is among the most rapidly warming regions on Earth, with an ice sheet that's vulnerable to the warming oceans because it's mainly grounded below sealevel."

"Because West Antarctica juts out into the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), those warming waters are thinning its ice sheet at an accelerating rate. ... Its ice sheet is also mainly grounded below sealevel, making it more vulnerable to the warming oceans than the East's which is mainly grounded above sealevel."

The fact that West Antarctica is mainly grounded below sealevel means that ocean warming causes rapid land ice thinning there. Also, the fact that the bedrock is deeper farther inland from the grounding line has "interesting" consequences. See Rignot et al. 2014 and Joughin et al. 2014.

Meanwhile, the humanity is adding as much CO2 as 135 volcanoes would, in a year. And the next year, and the nextâ¦

source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

Earths feedback mechanisms cannot cope with that geologically relatively short impulse. The extra energy that's being captured is showing in all of the sensors on earth and in space also.

Try to find a mention of that on the website.

Widespread legal ownership of firearms is a problem when there's practically no restrictions on who can own a gun. Did you see the recent study saying that almost 1 in 10 Americans both own a gun and self-report aggressive, impulsive behavior? In that society the old or infirm don't worry about predators, they're too busy worrying about bumping into some hothead and getting shot in response.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

How unusual is the 2012–2014 California drought?

By Daniel Griffin and Kevin J. Anchukaitis, published in Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 41, Issue 24, December 2014

Abstract
For the past three years (2012–2014), California has experienced the most severe drought conditions in its last century. But how unusual is this event? Here we use two paleoclimate reconstructions of drought and precipitation for Central and Southern California to place this current event in the context of the last millennium. We demonstrate that while 3 year periods of persistent below-average soil moisture are not uncommon, the current event is the most severe drought in the last 1200 years, with single year (2014) and accumulated moisture deficits worse than any previous continuous span of dry years. Tree ring chronologies extended through the 2014 growing season reveal that precipitation during the drought has been anomalously low but not outside the range of natural variability. The current California drought is exceptionally severe in the context of at least the last millennium and is driven by reduced though not unprecedented precipitation and record high temperatures.

The basic physics of climate change is that increasing levels of gases trap more energy from the sun, increasing the amount of energy in our atmosphere and climate system. We know by and large, most of the energy is stored in the oceans as water holds energy much better than gases in the air.

With such a simple observation, I'd like to make the observation that it seems too few of the IPCC guys pushing for policy stuff are paying any attention to the energy budget. Instead, we have the only basis scientifically being that the average surface temperature is warming, and CO2 levels are rising and we are the ones pushing them up. That's all well and good, and they are important observations. About 30 years ago though we started sending up satellites to measure incoming and outgoing radiation. The ERBS and CERES programs from NASA have given us direct measurements of trends in the overall energy balance at the edge of space. The most direct measurement of global warming that we can have. The summary from each program, has let us find a decade level average energy imbalance, and we've found it is in good or at least general agreement with energy levels measured via Ocean Heat Content observations.

Here's the important bit though. As the IPCC's most recent AR has observed, the satellite measurements show that for the duration of the CERES project, there has been NO TREND in the energy imbalance. The earlier ERBS data showed the same as well. Our satellite measurements have shown significant and very steady trends in energy balance cycling monthly, but the average over the years and decades we've measured is just a steady and consistent average neither shifting noticeably up or down. Meanwhile, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere over that same time have climbed like nobody's business. All our models and expectation for X degrees of warming for so much CO2 kinda hinges pretty heavy on CO2 pushing up the energy imbalance. If it's not, and observations suggest that. We may not need to be so worried as some of the panic ridden crowd wants.

Before I get citation needed shoved down my throat, here's a peer reviewed journal article published in Geophysical Research Letters. It is comparing observed atmosphere energy imbalance to the CMIP5 model runs. It finds good agreement, but also makes the very notable observation that the energy imbalance trend is dominated by volcanic activity(ie NOT the CO2 levels that are higher than they've been in millenia). Full abstract:
Observational analyses of running 5 year ocean heat content trends (Ht) and net downward top of atmosphere radiation (N) are significantly correlated (r~0.6) from 1960 to 1999, but a spike in Ht in the early 2000s is likely spurious since it is inconsistent with estimates of N from both satellite observations and climate model simulations. Variations in N between 1960 and 2000 were dominated by volcanic eruptions and are well simulated by the ensemble mean of coupled models from the Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). We find an observation-based reduction in N of 0.31±0.21Wm2 between 1999 and 2005 that potentially contributed to the recent warming slowdown, but the relative roles of external forcing and internal variability remain unclear. While present-day anomalies of N in the CMIP5 ensemble mean and observations agree, this may be due to a cancelation of errors in outgoing longwave and absorbed solar radiation.

Ok, opening up the blood brain barrier is bad. Got it.

Ah, microwave radiation opens up the blood brain barrier.

- Take Back Your Power

Diverting 93% of the water to grow lettuce in the desert since 1920 had nothing to do with it.

Also, ignore the arctic ice that's been increasing for three years, the antarctic ice that's always grown and hit a new record in 2014, snow in Hawaii, and the great lakes that have frozen early,and that have frozen over compete the last two years. Ignore Niagara falls that has frozen over two years in a row and ignore all the record cold around the country. Ignore the fact we kill killed half the worlds trees in the last 100 years and where we do theres drought and ignore the fact the IPCC did not admit trees ate CO2 until 2010. Ignore the fact NAS falsified the CO2 hypothesis in 2010 and ignore the fact the climate models now have 95% error.Ignore the fact corals have genes that upregulate to ignore acidification and warming and ignore the fact pollution (I'm especially looking at you big oil) has gotten worse while we're distracted by this nonsense. Ignore the fact not a single IPCC prediction ever came true.

And especially ignore NAA/NOAA when they say "there has been no warming this century"

Creation science, social science, climate science... if you have to add "science" to a word to give it legitimacy, it's not science any more than the Democratic People's republic of North Korea is a democracy. Real sciences yield natural laws to quote Feynman.

Instead, look at 01% of a country that is 2% of the world.

Refs:
1) Ice
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...
http://news.ku.dk/all_news/201...
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/ear...
http://www.nasa.gov/content/go...

2) records:
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/vide...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
http://www.staradvertiser.com/...
https://www.facebook.com/video...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
http://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/febru...
http://www.latimes.com/local/l...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

3) Trees:
http://www.pri.org/stories/201...
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
http://www.agu.org/news/press/...

the mean erection length is 5.17 inches : http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

The assessment of toxicological endpoints and BMD for the selected known and suspected human carcinogens was generally based on literature data, as own doseâ"response modeling would have gone beyond the scope of our study. Suitable risk assessment studies including endpoints and doseâ"response modeling results were typically identified in monographs of national and international risk assessments bodies such as WHO IPCS, JECFA, US EPA and EFSA. For substances without available monographs or with missing data on doseâ"response modeling results, the scientific literature in general was searched for such data. Searches were carried out in September 2011 in the following databases: PubMed (US National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD), Web of Science (Thomson Reuters, Philadelphia, PA), Scopus (Elsevier B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and Google Scholar (Google, Mountain View, CA).

The BMD/MOE approach was used for risk assessment.13, 14 In short, the BMD is the dose of a substance that produces a predetermined change in response rate (benchmark response) of an adverse effect compared to background based on doseâ"response modeling.14 The benchmark response is generally set near the lower limit of responses that can be measured (typically in the range of 1â"10%). The result of BMD-response modeling can then be used in combination with exposure data to calculate a MOE for quantitative risk assessment. The MOE is defined as the ratio between the lower one-sided confidence limit of the BMD (BMDL) and estimated human intake of the same compound. It can be used to compare the health risk of different compounds and in turn prioritize risk management actions. By definition, the lower the MOE, the larger the risk for humans; generally, a value under 10,000 used to define public health risks.15

So really, this is about the overall health risks of a substance. Certainly important but that is far from being an endorsement of any of the substances for routine use.

driven by Big Agrochem trying to make shitloads of money,

You mean like every other conventionally bred seed they also sell? Better take a stand against conventional breeding. Or maybe you mean Golden Rice, developed by the International Rice Research Institute, or the Rainbow Payaya, developed by the University of Hawai'i, or any number of other GMOs I could mention that have bugger all to do with corporations and are developed by independent university, public, or NGO scientists (who nonetheless are likewise opposed while anti-GMO people ignore them or have the gall to accuse them of being corporate or even vandalize publicly funded GMO research).

acquire copyrights and patents on key food crops

You mean like conventional breeding already does and has been for a long time? You mean the patents that expire and are used in public domain works? By the way, do you have a fair alternative?

'bundle' their own special seeds with their own special pesticides and weedkillers.

Like conventional breeding? Also, selling two products that go together is immoral now? Really? Guess Nintendo must be absolutely abominable for selling gaming systems and the games that go with them for decades, those monsters. By the way, are you referring to the special herbicide (not insecticide as you wrongly imply) that went off patent in 2000? And furthermore, did it ever occur to you that maybe farmers have adopted the herbicide tolerant crops in such large number for a good reason?

You don't even want to take a tiny, tiny risk of killing off pollinating insects or having 'terminator' genes or antibiotic markers jump species.

The refusal to accept any risk at all is a flawed ideology. That's the kind of thought that leads people to refusing vaccines on a 'risk aversion basis.' When one considers your rational of terminator genes (never even been used) and horizontal gene transfer (common only on an evolutionary time frame, and no more or less likely to happen to a transgene than any other gene; maybe I say we ban conventional breeding because I don't want rice sd-1 to jump species hmm? What risk do you see the NPTII gene you refer to having anyway?), your argument falls apart completely.

only if you own shares in big agro (unless you think buying expensive seed and complimentary chemicals from multinationals and not being able to re-plant harvested seed is somehow going to cure third world hunger).

You forgot increased yield, decreased insecticide, safer for farmers and consumers, lower environment impact by replacing harsher herbicide and soil degrading tillage, and saving an entire industry from a devastating virus. You mean beside those benefits you conveniently neglected to mention? And even if none of that were the case, you'd still be wrong because you'd be saying that the present use of a technology is not good therefore there is no good use for it. That's completely absurd, and made all the mor

Or shooting lasers/microwaves at the atmosphere to try and clean it and regenerate ozone.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

Graham Pickren wrote an excellent Ph.D thesis in 2013 "Political ecologies of electronic waste: uncertainty and legitimacy in the governance of e-waste geographies". While it isn't about nuclear waste, per se, it rather brilliantly describes how industrialized nations apply a "fetishism" to material which tracks downstreams but not upstreams. http://www.envplan.com/abstrac...

The point of the article is that the dirtiest recycling (or most questionable Yucca storage) is practically always better than the cleanest extraction (mining).... and this applies to the risk at Yucca (for storage) vs. mining uranium in the USA Southwest. Nevada's strangely among the most willing states to allow in situ mining, even when mercury effluent (from gold mining) turns their extraction points into Superfund sites. 14 years ago Nevada and NM legislators were trying to provide the private sector with $30 million to develop environmental restoration technologies for in-situ leach (ISL) mining of uranium. "In a statement from his office in Washington, D.C. Domenici said he decided to remove the ISL provisions from his comprehensive nuclear energy plan in order to calm fears stoked by "substantial misinformation about the legislation." (Gallup Independent, Nov. 10, 2001)"

Treatment of Planetary Environmental health oddly follows the same "waste centric" obsessions of western medical history. Western medicine is pretty great today, but went through a couple of centuries of giving mercury as a laxative, and being always focused on what comes out of the body rather than the nutrition stream. Closing the "waste deposit" while giving tax incentives to mine uranium is "anal retentive" environmentalism.

See also Pickren et. al. at AREA Waste, commodity fetishism and the ongoingness of economic life http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

I appreciate you working hard to get through to me. However, in this case, the facts are on my side. Learn to research.

Example 1.
Example 2.
Example 3.

You can see scientists are looking for explanations, rather than denying that the hiatus exists. Also, it's an honor to have a conversation with Bruce Perens.

In the first place 18 years is not long enough to invalidate a climate model

According to climate scientists it is.

“Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”

- http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/...

“Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.”

- http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

Science == If data doesn't support your hypothesis, it's in error.
CAGW supporters == If data doesn't support the hypothesis, change the data. Or the quotes. And call everyone else "deniers".

For the 18 years, look no further than Ben Santer. (is that good enough for you?)

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
“Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.”

An interesting article. Let me point out that word "at least". Instead of "at least," what does that article say about "at best"?

"While previous work has focused on a single period of record, we select analysis timescales ranging from 10 to 32 years, and then compare all possible observed TLT trends on each timescale with corresponding multi-model distributions of forced and unforced trends. We use observed estimates of the signal component of TLT changes and model estimates of climate noise to calculate timescale-dependent signal-to-noise ratios (S/N). These ratios are small (less than 1) on the 10-year timescale, increasing to more than 3.9 for 32-year trends. This large change in S/N is primarily due to a decrease in the amplitude of internally generated variability with increasing trend length"

So, 32 years was the best signal to noise ratio, in an analysis looking at trends from 10 to 32 year. They concluded: the longer the better.

So: ignore the "least". What does the data say when analyzed over a 32 year trend?

For the 18 years, look no further than Ben Santer. (is that good enough for you?)

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
“Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.”

Everything in climate science is about averaging. The Global mean temps are averaged. And most scientists would tell you that using averages is totaly retarded in the temperature context, but global warming scientists have redefined science and averages is what we use.
So now, you are going to tell me, that we use average temperatures for global mean, but WAIT, we shouldnt use averaged climate models to compare them to? Do you take people for complete tools or did you just not completely re-read your rebuttal before posting it?

Want to know why we dont like averages? Because the global mean surface air temperature has risen about 0.6 or 0.7C during the 20th century. But this rise is a result, in the most part, from the daily minimum temperature increasing at a faster rate or decreasing at a slower rate than the daily maximum as the daily maximum has basically not really changed over the same period.

About your point on models, so you are telling me when they take observed data, input it into the model, then VOILA they can make it work. Hindsight is so much fun isnt it? So will they be doing this every 20 years?

If your model cannot predict the future, because its a chaotic system and there are factors that can completely wipe out your predictions (like ENSO and others) than your model is completely useless for determining policy. The models do not track with the observed data. Plain and simple.

The warming of the oceans does not explain the complete lack of warming of the atmosphere over that period.
Did all of a sudden the oceans decided to absorb more heat than normal just to spite climate scientists? The factors affecting global warming have just decided to change for the last 20 years?

Studies show that the deep oceans are cooling (3600m or more) http://journals.ametsoc.org/do...
Also ARGO (floats) and CERES (satellites) data disagree on the amount of energy being accumulated between 2000M and the surface by a WIDE margin.
Something to keep in mind, they error bars (which they dont present for this data) would completely wipe out the observations.
Also, even if you go by argo data, the increase amounts to 0.02C per decade observed since they started using ARGO.

Lastly about ocean heat. AGW scientists claim they can measure the monthly average temperature of 0.65 BILLION cubic kilometres of ocean water to a precision of one hundredth of a degree Celsius which seems very doubtful to me.

... especially when shameless politicians seize the opportunity for massive wealth transfer to government.

Ah, I see, your objection is informed by your ideology more than science.

Here are some papers that examine the changes in outgoing longwave radiation spectra over time that support the increase in greenhouse forcing:

* Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997 – John E. Harries, Helen E. Brindley, Pretty J. Sagoo & Richard J. Bantges; Nature 410, 355-357 (15 March 2001) | doi:10.1038/35066553.

* Comparison of spectrally resolved outgoing longwave data between 1970 and present, J.A. Griggs et al, Proc SPIE 164, 5543 (2004).

* Spectral signatures of climate change in the Earth’s infrared spectrum between 1970 and 2006, Chen et al, (2007)

* Radiative forcing – measured at Earth’s surface – corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect, R. Phillipona et al, Geo Res Letters, v31 L03202 (2004)

* Measurements of the Radiative Surface Forcing of Climate, W.F.J. Evans, Jan 2006

* A method for continuous estimation of clear-sky downwelling longwave radiative flux developed using ARM surface measurements, C. N. Long and D. D. Turner, Journal of Geophysical Research, vol 113, D18206, doi:10.1029/2008JD009936, 2008

* Satellite-Based Reconstruction of the Tropical Oceanic Clear-Sky Outgoing Longwave Radiation and Comparison with Climate Models, Gastineau et al, J Climate, vol 27, 941–957 (2014).

... especially when shameless politicians seize the opportunity for massive wealth transfer to government.

Ah, I see, your objection is informed by your ideology more than science.

Here are some papers that examine the changes in outgoing longwave radiation spectra over time that support the increase in greenhouse forcing:

* Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997 – John E. Harries, Helen E. Brindley, Pretty J. Sagoo & Richard J. Bantges; Nature 410, 355-357 (15 March 2001) | doi:10.1038/35066553.

* Comparison of spectrally resolved outgoing longwave data between 1970 and present, J.A. Griggs et al, Proc SPIE 164, 5543 (2004).

* Spectral signatures of climate change in the Earth’s infrared spectrum between 1970 and 2006, Chen et al, (2007)

* Radiative forcing – measured at Earth’s surface – corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect, R. Phillipona et al, Geo Res Letters, v31 L03202 (2004)

* Measurements of the Radiative Surface Forcing of Climate, W.F.J. Evans, Jan 2006

* A method for continuous estimation of clear-sky downwelling longwave radiative flux developed using ARM surface measurements, C. N. Long and D. D. Turner, Journal of Geophysical Research, vol 113, D18206, doi:10.1029/2008JD009936, 2008

* Satellite-Based Reconstruction of the Tropical Oceanic Clear-Sky Outgoing Longwave Radiation and Comparison with Climate Models, Gastineau et al, J Climate, vol 27, 941–957 (2014).

You'd be surprised what kind of effect ship wake can have on ocean albedo. You should give that study a read! It's really interesting, even if you're not typically into geophysics.

For those interested, this appears to be the paper. The paper itself is paywalled; you can look at the supplementary material, which includes the diagrams. Oddly, the paper does not seem to be online at the university, even though other papers by the various authors are. Why do I know this? Because I wanted to see the temperature data that they used, so I went hunting.

The paper implies that the temperature data is very noisy, but that they were able to extract a signal anyway. The raw data should be provided in the supplementary material, so that people could attempt to replicate/verify this essential finding. Of course, the raw data are no where to be found. So we have no way to check.

Personally, I'm tired of "science" like this. If you're going to make a claim, put your damn data out there where anyone can see it. Raw data, a clear description of how you processed it, program code if you wrote a program. Otherwise, you're no better than the astrologist pontificating about the influence of Venus on your dog's love life.

Water and sewage plants are usually public utilities so the owner is less likely to flee without paying the clean up costs (or sell it to a third party who tragically go bust shortly after leaving no liability for the previous owner), plus the pollution they generate is significantly less toxic.

You're right of course, and drawing any correlation between a nuclear power plant (or any electric plant) and water treatment plants seemed silly at first. They light up whole different areas of the brain. I started asking myself, why is this so?

Have we become conditioned to think of electricity as something aside from a dire necessity?

Water and sewer plants are usually sited geographically, and people tend to settle along lakes, rivers and coastlines. Our city is fortunate to be within a gently sloping river valley so treated water is carried to the tap and wastes to the sewer plant mostly by gravity alone. You could be shown a blank topo map of most areas and draw a circle where each plant should be.

Power plants follow a similar rule of minimizing distance from their primary loads. Our grid was built out as-needed and not for surplus. Therefore aside from a few sad glaring exceptions such as the de-population of Detroit, one will never spot an electric plant somewhere on the landscape and conclude, an electric plant is no longer necessary here. Natural gas plants are being built to supplant coal generation on the grid so there is an emerging phenomenon where a plant here and there is deemed obsolete because "electricity is being generated elsewhere, cheaper, today." In many cases this is being played out by cents on the kWh, where the demise of something locally 'irreplaceable' is triggered by investor sentiment from the glut of natural gas distribution. Some day (perhaps sooner than many think) easily extractable natural gas will peak and begin its inexorable decline, and residents will turn once again to coal. Because of the ridiculous impossibility and expense of completely dismantling coal generation plants, that plant will still be there.

A properly operating sewer plant removes human toxicity from the environment, making its water discharge safe for human contact and subsequent drinking water treatment plants downstream. Likewise, a properly operating nuclear power plant is the only viable industrial-scale way to remove human toxicity from burning fossil fuel from the environment.

Despite its vilification and shortage of investment, the nuclear industry has innovated. The Candu and AP1000 light water reactor are the most "walk away safe" designs we can muster from the inherently dangerous combination of fission and water. Molten salt reactors could take this many steps further. Though the radioactivity of the salts is extreme the fissile is bound to the salts and your worst case scenario is a real mess, but it is a manageable mess that would remain there waituing for cleanup, not seep into the environment, as Tepco attempts to chase down Cesium tainted water molecules dispersed to air and sea.

It is my personal belief that every utility class wind farm will be a silent rusted blight within fifty years, and the electricity customers of those regions will be struggling to overcome the financial hardships imposed by them --- both the subsidized cost of their construction and insufficient generation over their brief lifetime --- but principally the wasting of human resource that diverted them away from better paths that could have been taken.

Central to all this is the question, do we think there will come a time when we simply do not need this (or that) nuclear power plant anymore? Decommissioning mentality not only forces your hand in that decision, by making nuclear power more expensive than it really is, it encourages a more insidious 'disposable culture' thinking, can't we just close this thi

Therr numbers don't even match their references.
Form this;

The study estimates that wind farms and nuclear power stations are responsible each for between 0.3 and 0.4 fatalities per gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity while fossil fueled power stations are responsible for about 5.2 fatalities per GWh.

That is higher than the 0.269 in the graph. Note the article refers to "birds and avian wildlife";

The paper concludes that further study is needed, but also that fossil fueled power stations appear to pose a much greater threat to birds and avian wildlife than wind farms and nuclear power plants.

Another example from another reference;

I estimated 888,000 bat and 573,000 bird fatalities/year (including 83,000 raptor fatalities)

So the high should be 1.46 million avian deaths.

CO2 is a proven heat trapper

Actually, it turns out that in the atmosphere, CO2 is a coolant.

That article is quite interesting, but it is not relevant to CO2 warming of the lower atmosphere and climate change.

It's talking about radiative cooling of the thermosphere which is a near vacuum and gas temperatures reach up to 4,500 degrees F (or 2,500C), and how the solar cycle influences the variability in radiative cooling.

Well how relevant CO2 concentrations are to climate change is still up to debate. But this indicates it is more relevant to the cooling of the thermosphere than previously though. It's not like the thermosphere is irrelevant to earth's temperature.

CO2 is a proven heat trapper

Actually, it turns out that in the atmosphere, CO2 is a coolant.

That article is quite interesting, but it is not relevant to CO2 warming of the lower atmosphere and climate change.

It's talking about radiative cooling of the thermosphere which is a near vacuum and gas temperatures reach up to 4,500 degrees F (or 2,500C), and how the solar cycle influences the variability in radiative cooling.